terminfo(5) -- Linux man page
NAME
terminfo - terminal capability data base
SYNOPSIS
/usr/share/terminfo/*/*
DESCRIPTION
Terminfo
is a data base describing terminals, used by screen-oriented programs such as
nvi(1),
rogue(1)
and libraries such as
curses(3X).
Terminfo
describes terminals by giving a set of capabilities which they
have, by specifying how to perform screen operations, and by
specifying padding requirements and initialization sequences.
Entries in
terminfo
consist of a sequence of `,' separated fields (embedded commas may be
escaped with a backslash or notated as \054).
White space after the `,' separator is ignored.
The first entry for each terminal gives the names which are known for the
terminal, separated by `|' characters.
The first name given is the most common abbreviation for the terminal,
the last name given should be a long name fully identifying the terminal,
and all others are understood as synonyms for the terminal name.
All names but the last should be in lower case and contain no blanks;
the last name may well contain upper case and blanks for readability.
Lines beginning with a `#' in the first column are treated as comments.
While comment lines are legal at any point, the output of captoinfo
and infotocap (aliases for tic)
will move comments so they occur only between entries.
Newlines and leading tabs may be used for formatting entries for readability.
These are removed from parsed entries.
The infocmp -f option relies on this to format if-then-else expressions:
the result can be read by tic.
Terminal names (except for the last, verbose entry) should
be chosen using the following conventions.
The particular piece of hardware making up the terminal should
have a root name, thus ``hp2621''.
This name should not contain hyphens.
Modes that the hardware can be in, or user preferences, should
be indicated by appending a hyphen and a mode suffix.
Thus, a vt100 in 132 column mode would be vt100-w.
The following suffixes should be used where possible:
| Suffix | Meaning | Example
|
| -nn | Number of lines on the screen | aaa-60
|
| -np | Number of pages of memory | c100-4p
|
| -am | With automargins (usually the default) | vt100-am
|
| -m | Mono mode; suppress color | ansi-m
|
| -mc | Magic cookie; spaces when highlighting | wy30-mc
|
| -na | No arrow keys (leave them in local) | c100-na
|
| -nam | Without automatic margins | vt100-nam
|
| -nl | No status line | att4415-nl
|
| -ns | No status line | hp2626-ns
|
| -rv | Reverse video | c100-rv
|
| -s | Enable status line | vt100-s
|
| -vb | Use visible bell instead of beep | wy370-vb
|
| -w | Wide mode (> 80 columns, usually 132) | vt100-w
|
For more on terminal naming conventions, see the term(7) manual page.
Capabilities
The following is a complete table of the capabilities included in a
terminfo description block and available to terminfo-using code. In each
line of the table,
The variable is the name by which the programmer (at the terminfo level)
accesses the capability.
The capname is the short name used in the text of the database,
and is used by a person updating the database.
Whenever possible, capnames are chosen to be the same as or similar to
the ANSI X3.64-1979 standard (now superseded by ECMA-48, which uses
identical or very similar names). Semantics are also intended to match
those of the specification.
The termcap code is the old
termcap
capability name (some capabilities are new, and have names which termcap
did not originate).
Capability names have no hard length limit, but an informal limit of 5
characters has been adopted to keep them short and to allow the tabs in
the source file
Caps
to line up nicely.
Finally, the description field attempts to convey the semantics of the
capability. You may find some codes in the description field:
- (P)
-
indicates that padding may be specified
- #[1-9]
-
in the description field indicates that the string is passed through tparm with
parms as given (#i).
- (P*)
-
indicates that padding may vary in proportion to the number of
lines affected
- (#i)
-
indicates the ith parameter.
These are the boolean capabilities:
| T} | | |
|
| has_print_wheel | daisy | YC |
printer needs operator to change character set
|
| has_status_line | hs | hs |
has extra status line
|
| hue_lightness_saturation | hls | hl |
terminal uses only HLS color notation (Tektronix)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| insert_null_glitch | in | in
|
insert mode distinguishes nulls
|
|
|
| 
